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Local Pagosa Springs News
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| Confusing the Big Box Issue, Part One |
| Bill Hudson | 3/8/10 |
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What’s the best tactic for a Town Council to use, when the voters are threatening to express their opinion about the future of their own town and county — by overriding a Town Council decision to deregulate development within the Town limits?
Apparently, the best tactic is to simply try and confuse the hell out of the voters.
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!
Or in this case, the phrase appears to be “Damn the Home Rule Charter, full speed ahead.”
Back in August, the Pagosa Springs Town Council took a somewhat aggressive stab at what is referred to, among our local government leadership, as “economic development.”
(Among independent commentators, such as certain hard-working Daily Post writers, their actions are more often referred to as “bowing down to the special interest groups.”)
At the recommendation of Town manager David Mitchem — a man who, on other occasions, has shown himself to be intelligent and perceptive — the Council voted, with one dissenting vote, to completely throw out all the Town’s “Big Box” regulations — the regulations the Council itself had put in place in 2006 after weeks of discussion and compromise.
 That set of regulations had taken over two years of study, debate and negotiations — and were finally put in place only when a Big Box retailer approached the Town Planning Department and inquired about locating a large scale retail development within the Town limits. Back in 2006, it was a frightening prospect to some local residents, to allow a Big Box store — a massive retail force that would, no doubt, affect the ability of local “mom & pop” stores to survive here — into the community, without some type of local control over its impacts.
Almost exactly three years later, the Town Council heard from Mitchem that another (or the same?) Big Box retailer was considering Pagosa Springs. That retailer had apparently told Mitchem they would not consider locating here if our current municipal regulations remained in force.
The Council quickly, and without any public hearings — without even any extensive Council discussion — voted to throw out all its existing Big Box regulations. That vote took place in August, 2009.
Or should we say, it voted to throw out most of its Big Box regulations. It’s that tricky detail — “most” — that now threatens to create a confusing set of ballot issues for the Town’s April 6 election.
When the Council voted in August to toss out Section 2.4.5 of the Pagosa Springs Land Use and Development Code — the section governing Big Box stores — they neglected to also toss out numerous other snippets of code, located in various other sections of the LUDC, that were directly related to Section 2.4.5.
At that same August meeting, local attorney Matt Roane reminded the Council that, by passing Mitchem’s proposed repeal, they would be doing an incomplete job of updating the LUDC.
Roane also noted that the Big Box regulations were a highly charged issue here in Pagosa, and suggested that a better approach to the update would be to take the issue to the voters.
The Council ignored Roane’s advice and repealed Section 2.4.5 anyway — in other words, they did only a partial job of tossing out the Town’s Big Box rules, and they decided not to allow the voters to weigh in on the issue.
Two months later, the Town was paying its own attorney to review a petition filed by Roane and several other citizens, requesting that the issue be put before the voters, as allowed by the Town’s Home Rule Charter. After some negotiations with Roane and his group of activists, the Town agreed to place “Referendum A” on the April 6 Town ballot.
Referendum A is going to be somewhat confusing, right from the get go. The language of the ballot measure asks:
“Shall the Town of Pagosa Springs repeal the large retail development permit requirements, as contained in section 2.4.5 of the Town of Pagosa Springs Land Use and Development Code and Large Retail Development Permits section of the Land Use and Development Code’s User Manual?”
In other words, if a voter agrees with David Mitchem and the Council that Section 2.4.5 should be repealed and that “large scale retailers” should be allowed to build anywhere in the Town of Pagosa Springs — including right in the middle of the central downtown business district — without any special regulations, they should vote “YES” on Referendum A.
A voter who wants to retain Section 2.4.5 and give the Town government some type of limited control over where Big Boxes are built — and what mitigations they must provide to protect the Town’s overall social and economic interests — should vote “NO” on Referendum A.
It’s interesting to note that the April 6 vote is not a choice “for” or “against” Big Box stores in Pagosa Springs. Both choices on the ballot would allow Big Boxes. Essentially, a “YES” vote is for “Unregulated Big Boxes”. A “NO” vote is for “Regulated Big Boxes” — for continuing the current rules and guidelines.
At some point during the past few weeks, however, the Town manager and Council have apparently decided to confuse the voters by adding another ballot measure — “Referendum B” — to the April ballot.
I’m still not actually sure what Referendum B says, even though the “first reading” was approved last month. The next day following that approval, I went to the office of Town clerk April Hessman — the person in charge of Town elections — and asked her for a copy of Referendum B.
She told me no copy was available.
I thought, gee, that’s pretty odd, since I had watched the Council vote, just the day before, to approve that wording.
According to a brief description of Referendum B given to me by April, however, I got the picture that Referendum B would ask the voters to repeal that “additional” LUDC language which the Council had neglected to deal with back in August.
April summarized Referendum B for me, however, by saying that it deals with Big Box developments larger than 100,000 square feet — whereas Referendum A deals mainly with retail developments smaller than 100,000 square feet.
At least, that’s how April explained it to me. As I said, I haven’t yet seen the language for Referendum B — even though the “second reading” is scheduled to take place at the Town Council meeting tomorrow, at a meeting that is not yet publicized on the Town website.
100,000 square feet is approximately the size of the entire north side of the uptown City Market shopping center, along Village Drive — including everything from the City Market to the ALCO store.
It appears that, should voters get really confused and reject Referendum A but approve Referendum B, then we'd have a real legal mess on our hands.
But the issue gets even more interesting. Because it appears that the Town Council has certain procedures to follow when approving ordinances — rules about providing copies of proposed ordinances to the public before, or during, Council meetings, so the public can fully understand and comment on the Council’s proposed decisions.
And it seems the Council ignored those rules when passing the “first reading” of their proposed Referendum B.
When a private citizen violates the Town’s rules and regulations, there is often a penalty to pay — a fine, or other type of penalty. But when the Town Council itself violates its own Home Rule Charter — and gets caught in the act — the Town staff is merely directed to “get suggestions from the Town’s attorney” and the matter is soon forgotten.
Read Part Two... |
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